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I spotted a rather dull article in the Metro this morning (one of many), as I stood on a chilly platform waiting for the 07.58. I had to abandon reading it as the train approached, and instead put on my determined ‘I’m-going-to-do-this-but-I-know-it’s-going-to-be-bad’ grimace as I prepared to board, ready to be hit by that wall of smell which can only be described as a sweaty dog mixed with overtones of early morning passenger excretions. Oh the joy of trains.But I digress. The article itself was a rather uninspiring blurb with the title “Injury lawyer bills '480 per cent higher' than compensation payouts”. True to form, you might say, for the Metro. Sigh.Thinking this would be classic Law Actually material, I went back to the article via their webpage, only to spot something much more interesting, albeit rather dated now. Goodness knows how I missed it at the time.It was so good, I thought I wouldn’t trust the Metro any further so I skipped off to search for it on googl…

From Roll on Friday 14/02/12:Poor old Hogan Lovells. Two years ago the firm launched its "Ladder to Law" programme. The scheme is intended to widen access to the profession by providing open days and work experience to kids from inner City state schools. It's clearly a very good thing. When it works...Heavens to Betsy. That sounds rather like inviting the hoi polloi to the legal party. That can’t be right, old chap. Yesterday morning one young student who was due to turn up never made it to the induction. Cue frantic calls from HR, the girl's parents and the girl's school. Eventually she was found: setting up coffee and biscuits in Hogan Lovell's meeting rooms. Apparently she'd been wandering around lost. A temporary catering manager bumped into her, assumed that she must have been at the firm to do some waitressing work, snapped her up and packed her off to the meeting rooms. Forgive me. I know she’s young, may have been nervous and it’s up to empl…

Yep. Another blogging birthday is ticked off.I looked back at what I wrote a year ago and was depressed to realise it was more or less identical to what I planned to write this time.So I just won’t bother.I think I’ll go off and enjoy some Law Actually birthday cake instead.

All found here.Tweet heart? Oh my! Feel like moaning in despair at this one? Permission Granted.Inbox Zero isn’t awesome. It’s an unattainable myth with no basis in reality. As a Valentine’s Day card this fails miserably. Next?Hmm. Cute. That antenna is very, um, erect. Probably just a coincidence. Bit of a damp squib. I can’t see many ladies’ hearts going all-a-flutter on receipt of this. That’s not to say that HTML and CSS can’t be sexy. It just isn’t here.*

*Ok, scratch that – it’s never sexy.Cracking. That’s more like it. Just tell me the message inside isn’t in Comic Sans though.Ah, romance for the Facebook modern age. I think we have a winner.

For those who aren’t in the know (and in the interests of karma), I thought it would be well worth flagging up the King’s Student Law Review, the existence of which I was alerted to recently.So what’s the big deal? Well, firstly, it’s an excellent peer-reviewed journal written by students for students everyone. It describes itself as an:online academic publication managed by students of the King's College London School of Law. The Review seeks to publish high-quality legal scholarship written by undergraduate and graduate students at King's and other leading law schools across the globe.If you aren’t a King’s student and your law school has a law school magazine which is more like this, have no fear. The KSLR isn’t locked behind an expensive paywall; its open access policy means everyone can access and download the material completely free of charge – just as God intended. If you feel a bit funny accessing ‘free-as-in-free’ material, it’s also available via HeinOnline, for you…

I was on a train on Saturday when I overheard someone asking their iPhone all kinds of weather updates – with varying degrees of success. Yep, it was snowflake panic central throughout the whole carriage.In the circumstances, it would have been a lot more efficient to have used the touchscreen instead of speech recognition to find out that the 5 snowflakes that had settled were enough to bring the country to its knees. I’m not an Apple user myself, and despite the good things I’ve heard about Siri, it’s not enough to make me buy an Apple product.I’m still somewhat burned by the crashing disappointment of speech recognition back in the late 90s and I find it tough getting past this mental block. I recognise that it has come on a long way since then and Siri, for what it’s worth, seems to be a significant leap forwards.However, just like my experience on Saturday, this hilarious spin on an Apple iPhone commercial stands as a painful reminder that speech recognition technology still has …

Recognising that large swathes of the public wouldn’t trust a personal injury solicitor further than they could throw him, one firm has decided to take on the challenge of restoring faith in this branch of the profession and in the worthiness of the claims they bring. I know what you’re thinking: pity the poor PI solicitor, eh? It comes to something when they need to drum-up business and bolster their credibility using an online game. But let’s not be cynical – give it chance.So, the idea is simple. You watch a selection of short clips in which people suffer various slips, trips, and RTAs and vote whether you think they should bring a claim. Personally, I think it’s missing a voiceover by Michael Buerke and the 999 jingle for dramatic effect.So far, so good. But the key question for me is why people would want to do this.Most people only think about instructing a personal injury lawyer if they’ve suffered some kind of accident or other misfortune. Otherwise, why would you?And those wh…

I still find it staggering just how bad some university websites are at marketing their courses, given their budgets and specialist marketing departments. What with the hikes in tuition fees, increasing doubt over the value of degrees and the fact that traditional law school prospectuses are going the same way as the Yellow Pages, the effectiveness of their websites has never been more crucial. I should probably explain: I’ve visited loads of law school websites over the years. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, when, as a procrastinating student stuck fast in the grips of a never-ending paper, I decided to research the authors of some of the materials I was citing. There’s nothing like a trawl through the staff profile pages of law school websites to while away a few minutes, (and if you can convince yourself it’s a productive use of time, so much the better). And don’t knock it until you’ve tried it; sometimes it even bears fruit.It’s very refreshing, then, to see the University of Gla…

Michael is a practising lawyer and accomplished cynic from the UK. He’s been blogging since his student days and can’t quite bring himself to hang up his blogging gloves just yet (they’re fingerless gloves, obviously).
He loves fussing over trivialities, seeking comfort from repetitive activities, idly reminiscing and moaning about things.